Turkish forces staged a brutal crackdown on the Kurdish population who protested against the usurpation of their will with the removal of the co-mayors they elected and their replacement by a government-appointed trustee.
People have been taking to the streets since 4 November in protest at the usurpation of the municipalities of Mardin, Batman and Halfeti and the appointment of trustees by the Ministry of Interior in the place of the democratically elected representatives of the Kurdish people for the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party).
A total of 195 people were detained during the protests against the usurpation of Batman Municipality by the AKP-MHP through the appointment of a trustee on 4 November.
While 25 of 195 detainees were remanded in custody, 5 people were sentenced to house arrest. The others were released.
While the demonstrators were met with brutal police violence, lawyers Bawer Mızrak and Serhat Kayaoğlu, members of Diyarbakır Bar Association Human Rights Centre’s Anti-Torture Commission, filed a criminal complaint against the police violence against the participants of the protests against the usurpation of the DEM Party municipality in Batman.
In the criminal complaint to Batman Chief Public Prosecutor's Office, the police officers were charged with ‘obstructing constitutional freedoms and public duty’, ‘abuse of office’, ‘torture and ill-treatment and injury’, ‘deprivation of liberty’.
The criminal complaint drew attention to the articles of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), to which Turkey is a party, and the Constitution's articles on freedom of expression, the right to assembly and demonstration and prohibition of torture, and referred to the decisions of the Turkish Constitutional Court (AYM) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
In the criminal complaint, images of police attacks on people were presented as evidence.
